Safety first: GPCOG has a travel plan
Courtesy / Greater Portland Council of Governments
A new transportation planning initiative in Greater Portland aims to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2045 by prioritizing safe road design.
More Information
A new transportation planning initiative in Greater Portland looks to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2045.
The plan, called Vision Zero Greater Portland: A Safe System Approach, is intended to help communities qualify for federal funding to make changes to the region's roadways so they are safer. Released last week, it was crafted and unanimously adopted by the Greater Portland Council of Governments transportation policy board.
"We've always been concerned about safety, but the adoption of this plan represents a big shift for our region," said Belinda Ray, the council’s director of strategic partnerships.
The plan addresses safety issues for all road users, especially walkers and bikers, who are disproportionately killed and injured in collisions. Between 2016 and 2022, 22% of fatal crashes involved bicyclists or pedestrians.
In Greater Portland, deaths from traffic crashes rose from 15 in 2021 to 25 in 2022. In Maine, fatalities rose from 155 in 2021 to 185 last year.
“The safety for all modes of transportation is now at the center of all our decisions around roadways,” Ray said.
The conventional approach to dealing with traffic fatalities and injuries puts the responsibility for safety on the individual and assumes that only perfect behavior can prevent crashes, according to a news release.
The Vision Zero approach, by contrast, says that people make mistakes, so the road system and related policies should be designed to ensure mistakes do not result in severe injuries or fatalities.
The plan includes the following strategies:
- Implement investments and policies that reduce the region's reliance on single-occupancy vehicles and encourage people to walk, cycle and take public transit
- Encourage all users to make smart choices to travel safely and respect all modes of travel.
- Make changes to road designs, such as replacing intersections with roundabouts, providing protected lanes for bicyclists and pedestrians, lowering speed limits where appropriate and prohibiting “right on red” in key locations.
To view the report, click here.
The council collaborated on the plan with 18 municipalities in the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System, which is a federal metropolitan planning organization that coordinates transportation planning and investment decisions with the state, municipalities and public transportation partners.
The Vision Zero strategy was first implemented in the late 1990s in Sweden, where traffic deaths have decreased by more than half over the last 20 years, according to the release. The strategy has since been adopted by several European countries, New Zealand and several states in Australia.
In the U.S., more than 45 communities have adopted Vision Zero policies, including New York City, Boston, Cambridge, Mass., Seattle, Houston and Tampa, according to VisionZeroNetwork.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Related Content
So they are encouraging people to cycle to work in one sentence and talk about how many cyclists died in another?? This doesn't make me want to get on a bike. I traded in my road bike for a mountain bike as I didn't feel it was safe to ride on the road any longer. People do not pay attention, they drive too fast and they just don't care. If we are going to reduce speed limits, they need to be enforced or why bother. People do not adhere to the limits now, why will they if they go down? I applaud the idea, but the rules need to be enforced to really make the roadways safer. Instead of defunding the police, how about we pay them well and give them the tools they need to do the job and do it well!
1 Comments